Blood, Belly & Stars

Shannon Amrein

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Spirituality
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Blood, Belly & Stars explores healing through the restoration of relationship. Join Shannon Amrein for conversations on embodiment, shamanism, womb wisdom, intuition, soul medicine, and Earth-based healing, along with weekly intuitive readings to guide you through the energies and themes of the week ahead. shannonamrein.substack.com

2d ago

What My Pelvis Has Taught Me About Relationship

In this conversation, I share how my pelvis became one of my greatest teachers about relationship, and not just my relationship with my body, but the way I show up in relationship with other people and with life itself. My own journey into pelvic awareness began through reproductive health, surgeries, pain, and an exploration of pleasure. I learned about my anatomy. I spent time looking at and touching my body. But eventually, I realized that I was still approaching my pelvis with an expectation: I wanted something from it. I wanted pleasure. I wanted a particular response. And I hadn’t yet learned how to simply listen. That realization changed the way I work with my body. In this episode, I explore what it means to touch without an agenda, to become curious about the tissues themselves, and to build a relationship that isn’t dependent on what we receive in return. I share why I began practicing what I call non-extractive touch, and how learning to listen to my pelvis has changed my understanding of reciprocity, presence, and relationship. I also explore why pleasure can be a beautiful doorway into a relationship with the pelvis, while still being only one part of what this relationship can hold. In this conversation, we explore: * Why healing, for me, is fundamentally about restoring relationship * How my own pelvic health journey led me into a deeper relationship with my body * The difference between knowing your anatomy and truly listening to your body * What I mean by non-extractive touch * Why a relationship with your pelvis doesn’t need to have pleasure or another outcome as its goal * How listening to your body can change the way you understand relationship more broadly * Why the pelvis deserves our attention beyond sex, orgasm, and reproduction Want to build a relationship with your own pelvis? Enrollment is open for Love Your Lips, my four-week program beginning November 11. Enroll here: https://www.shannonamrein.com/offerings/p/love-your-lips Together, we’ll explore the anatomy of the vulva and practice ways of touching and getting to know the tissues of your own body. My intention is to give you the knowledge, familiarity, and experience to begin building a deeper relationship with your pelvis and vulva. You don’t need to arrive with anatomical knowledge or prior experience. You just need a willingness to get curious about your own body. I’d love to have you join me. Continue the conversation If something in this episode sparked a thought, a question, or a realization of your own, leave me a comment below. I’d love to hear what this conversation brings up for you. Thanks for being here. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit shannonamrein.substack.com
6d ago

What Is the Truth?

What are you avoiding because you’re afraid of what might change if you finally face it? In this November 2026 month-ahead reading, I explore the medicine of truth, confrontation, discernment, and balanced forward movement. As always, I connect with animal guides and runes to help guide the energy of this month. This month, we’re invited to look honestly at the stories we tell ourselves, the situations we’ve been avoiding, and the truths that may be ready to come into view. November’s guiding question is simple, but not always easy: What is true? In this episode * Reflecting on October: Strategy, fear, and action—and the unexpected ways we may have been asked to move. * Wild Boar medicine: Confronting fear, discomfort, procrastination, and the truths we’ve been avoiding. * The stories that keep us safe: Exploring how our narratives about family, relationships, work, and identity can protect us from necessary change. * Teiwaz: Moving forward with justice, balance, and consideration for ourselves and the people affected by our choices. * Berkana: Unconditional love, feminine support, inner-child work, and opportunities for remothering ourselves. * Owl medicine: Discernment, intuition, truth, and the practice of seeing what may have been difficult to acknowledge. * The deeper invitation of November: What is true, and how can you live in greater reverence for that truth? November’s animal guides and runes Wild Boar — Courage and confrontation Where are you avoiding something uncomfortable? Wild Boar invites you to confront your fears, finish what you’ve been putting off, and look honestly at the situations that ask something of you. The courage you need may not be missing; you may simply need to find where you’ve hidden it. Teiwaz — Justice and balanced movement Forward movement is still available, but November asks us to consider how we move. Is your next step fair to you, your body, your needs, and the people your decisions affect? Berkana — Unconditional love and remothering Pointing toward the past, Berkana brings attention to feminine support, the inner child, and the possibility of offering ourselves the love and care we may have needed earlier in life. Past relationships or old patterns may also come back into focus. Owl — Wisdom and discernment Owl asks us to pay attention to what we see, what we sense, and what we make those experiences mean. Where might you be overlooking something? What truth is asking to be acknowledged? This is an invitation to observe carefully, trust your intuition, and remain curious about what is actually there. Together, Wild Boar and Owl bring us back to the heart of this reading: confront the truth you’ve been avoiding, and let that truth inform how you move forward. Reflection questions for November * What truth have I been avoiding because acknowledging it might require me to change? * Am I making myself do something I don’t actually want to do? Why? * Are my stories about a person or situation still true, or are they keeping me from seeing something new? * What would balanced, just movement look like for me right now? * Where might I need to offer myself more unconditional love or care? * What am I noticing, and what meaning am I assigning to it? * How can I live in greater reverence for what is true? Work With Me Love Your Lips — Four-week program Enrollment is open for my four-week program for women who want to build a deeper relationship with their pelvis and vulva. Through live classes, engaging anatomy education, and self-touch practices, the program supports a more connected relationship with the body and care for the health of pelvic and vulva tissues. The program begins November 11, 2026. 2027 Year-Ahead Readings I will be opening spaces for my annual year-ahead readings mid-November. These recorded readings offer intuitive guidance for the themes of each month in 2027, using one rune and one card per month, to support you as you move through the year. These readings are not predictions of exactly what will happen. They’re an invitation to work with the themes that emerge and use them as guidance throughout the year. Availability, pricing, and booking details will be shared on Substack when enrollment opens. Thank you for being here for another month ahead reading. May November meet you where you are, bring the truths you’re ready to see into focus, and help you find the courage to stand in them. I’ll see you next month for the December reading. Listen, reflect, and follow the truth where it leads. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit shannonamrein.substack.com
Oct 26

What Healing Can—and Can’t—Promise You

We’ve been told that if we do enough healing work, life will fall into place, almost magically. Heal your blocks and find the relationship. Shift your money mindset and create abundance. Do the work, have the breakthrough, and become the version of yourself who finally gets to live the life she desires. But what happens when we start believing that if we don’t have the life we want, it must mean we haven’t healed enough? In this episode, I’m questioning some of the promises made throughout the healing, spiritual, and self-improvement industries—and exploring what healing can offer us, without overpromising. I share part of my own journey with chronic Lyme disease, including the moment I realized that even after years of healing, I couldn’t guarantee that I would never be sick or uncomfortable again. Because healing isn’t a finish line. And no single modality, breakthrough, or perfectly executed practice can guarantee that life will unfold exactly as we hope. So what do I believe healing can offer? Not a perfect life, nor a guarantee that you’ll get everything you want. But the possibility of building a relationship with yourself that you can return to, even when life is difficult, uncertain, or not what you imagined. In this conversation, I explore: * Why so much healing work implicitly promises that if you heal enough, you’ll finally get what you want * How that promise can leave us believing we’re doing something wrong when life doesn’t change the way we expected * My experience with chronic Lyme disease and the realization that healing doesn’t mean never being sick or uncomfortable again * Why I see healing as a spiral rather than a finish line * The difference between a breakthrough and the ongoing work that makes meaningful change possible * What I do—and don’t—promise the women I work with * Why healing, for me, is about restoring relationship with your body, soul, intuition, and life * What it means to live more fully without waiting for everything to be fixed first A question to take with you: What might become possible if you stopped treating healing as the thing that has to happen before you can fully live? Thanks for being here and listening. I’d love to hear what resonates with you, or where your perspective differs. Come share your thoughts with me on Substack. Ready to go deeper? If you’re ready to build a deeper, embodied relationship with your pelvis and learn to tend to your tissues, Love Your Lips is now open for enrollment. This is an invitation to come into more intimate relationship with your body—not because you need to fix it, but because there is more of you available to experience. LEARN MORE ABOUT LOVE YOUR LIPS → This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit shannonamrein.substack.com
Oct 22

What Are You Actually Hearing?

What Are You Actually Hearing? What if listening to your body isn’t just about hearing a sensation—but learning to understand where that sensation is coming from? In this episode, we’re not just talking about listening to your body. We’re practicing it. I’ll guide you through a simple, embodied practice for slowing down, bringing your awareness into your body, noticing what you’re experiencing, and becoming curious about what may be underneath it. You don’t need to figure anything out. You don’t need to get the “right” answer. We’re simply going to practice being with the body long enough to listen. Because learning to listen to your body isn’t something you master in one sitting. It’s a relationship you build over time. Come find a quiet place to sit, and let’s practice together. Want support going deeper? If something comes up in this practice that you want to explore more deeply, you can work with me privately through a Listening Session, Love Your Lips, Womb Continuum Care, or WOMB HOMECOMING. EXPLORE WAYS TO WORK WITH ME → Thanks for reading! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit shannonamrein.substack.com
Oct 19

Are You Actually Listening to Your Body?

What if you’re trying to listen to your body and what you’re actually hearing is fear, an old identity, a protective part of yourself, or an experience from your past? In this episode, I explore why learning to listen to your body is more complicated than simply doing whatever your body seems to want. I share stories from my own experiences with illness, food, movement, and recovery, and how I learned to recognize the difference between a physical signal and the layers of past experience that can shape how we interpret what we’re feeling. Because listening to your body isn’t just physical. It’s relational, emotional, energetic, and spiritual. It asks us to become familiar enough with our bodies to recognize what we’re actually experiencing—and curious enough to notice what might be filtering that experience. I also share a simple practice for beginning to bring more awareness back into your body and building the kind of relationship that makes deeper listening possible. Because before we can truly listen to the body, we have to learn how to be in it. Want to practice this for yourself? Love Your Lips is a four-week embodied journey into your vulva and pelvis through anatomy, touch, breath, awareness, and experience. You’ll learn about your anatomy, but more importantly, you’ll have the opportunity to slow down and begin developing your own felt relationship with this part of your body. Love Your Lips opens TODAY. JOIN LOVE YOUR LIPS This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit shannonamrein.substack.com
Oct 12

Knowing Your Body Is Different From Knowing About Your Body

You can know your anatomy.Know the names of your organs and bones.Know what your diagnosis means.Know what your body is “supposed” to do. But knowing your body is something different. It is relational. It is knowing what your body actually feels like. What sensation feels like. What touch feels like. What feels good, uncomfortable, numb, tender, or alive. And it means learning to slow down, touch, breathe, and listen without immediately trying to interpret, fix, or change what you’re experiencing. In this episode, I explore the difference between knowing about your body and actually knowing your body—and why I believe relationship with the body is foundational to the rest of our healing work. I use the pelvis and vulva as an example of what this can look like in practice, and I share ways you can begin becoming more intimately acquainted with your own body. Because knowing your body isn’t something you accomplish once. It’s a relationship you build over time. Want to experience this for yourself? Love Your Lips is a four-week embodied journey into your vulva and pelvis through anatomy, touch, breath, awareness, and experience. You’ll learn about your anatomy—but we won’t stop there. You’ll begin developing your own felt, sensory relationship with this part of your body, with practices you can continue long after the four weeks are over. You don’t need to know anything before you begin. You just need curiosity and a willingness to meet your body differently. Love Your Lips is opening next week. GET EARLY ACCESS → This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit shannonamrein.substack.com
Oct 5

What Touch Teaches Us About Relationship

More than you might think. In this episode, I explore touch as a mirror for relationship—not just with our bodies and our wombs, but with ourselves, with pleasure, with boundaries, with other people, and with the way we allow ourselves to receive care. I talk about the difference between extractive and non-extractive touch. We are often taught to touch our bodies with an outcome in mind: to change something, fix something, get somewhere, produce pleasure, or make our bodies look different. But what happens when touch isn’t about getting something from ourselves? What happens when we touch simply to listen? To feel. To notice. To say hello. To be with ourselves with love and reverence. In this episode, I explore: * What the way you touch your body can reveal about how you value yourself * The difference between extractive and non-extractive touch * What happens when we touch our bodies because we’re trying to change or fix them * How cultural messages about women’s bodies can become embedded in the way we touch ourselves * What your relationship with self-touch might reveal about your relationship with your body * Why the pelvis and vulva can be such powerful places to explore this * How touch can teach us about pleasure, sensation, boundaries, and receiving * What the way we allow others to touch us can mirror about our relationship with ourselves * Why slowness and intention matter * My own journey with touch, sensory sensitivity, and learning to receive touch from others * How receiving Womb Continuum Care became part of my own relationship with my body * Why I believe touch deserves a much more central place in conversations about embodiment and healing * And an invitation to simply notice: How do you touch yourself? I also share more of my own story—including a time in my life when physical touch was extremely difficult for me, and how developing a more intentional relationship with my body and receiving supportive touch from other women changed that relationship over time. This episode is an invitation to get curious, notice, and let touch become information. Sometimes the way we touch ourselves can tell us something our minds haven’t quite found words for yet. A question to take with you What would it feel like to touch your body without needing anything from it? No fixing. No changing. No outcome. Just listening. Try that this week. Work with me WOMB HOMECOMING is my six-month private mentorship for women who are ready to deepen their relationship with their bodies, their souls, their wombs, their intuition, and the life they’re living. LOVE YOUR LIPS is a four-week embodied journey into the vulva and pelvis, created to help you develop a deeper, more intimate relationship with your own body through anatomy, attention, touch, and experience. Learn more and join the Love Your Lips waitlist. And if something in this episode sparked a question, brought something to the surface, or made you see your own relationship with touch differently, I’d love to hear from you. Thanks for reading! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit shannonamrein.substack.com
Oct 1

Things I’ve Changed My Mind About in Healing

Over the years I’ve changed my mind about a lot of things in healing work. I don’t believe that my approaches in the past were wrong, just lacking as much information as I have today. After more years putting these ideas through my own life, working with other people, and paying attention to what actually creates change that can be lived and embodied, I’ve changed my mind about some things. In this episode, I share some of the things I approach differently now than I did when I first began this work. I talk about why I no longer use Akashic Records as a standalone healing modality, why I now begin with the body before moving into deeper spiritual or soul work, and why I’ve stopped thinking in terms of finding a single “root cause.” I also talk about the tension between healing and the desire to understand every variable, and how I’ve learned to recognize when there may be more to explore versus when the body is telling us that something has already become integrated enough to live with. Some of the things I explore: • Why I believe the body needs to come first in healing work• Why I no longer think there is always one root cause underneath what we’re experiencing• Why healing doesn’t have a finish line• Why more information, readings, books, or spiritual knowledge don’t necessarily create more freedom• What I mean by the body being able to “digest” healing• Why embodiment matters more to me now than accumulating knowledge• How I think about past experiences and the stories we continue to carry from them• Why spiritual work needs to have an impact on how we actually live our lives• How my own healing philosophy and practice have changed over the years At the heart of all of this is a question I keep coming back to: Is the work we’re doing actually helping us become more present and more available for our lives? For me, healing isn’t about reaching a point where nothing ever hurts, nothing ever activates us, or nothing else ever needs our attention. It’s about developing a relationship with ourselves that allows us to meet what arises without constantly searching for the next thing that needs to be fixed. And increasingly, that begins with the body. I’d love to hear what lands for you. Was there something in this episode that you strongly agree with? Something you don’t agree with? Something that made you curious or uncomfortable? Share your reflections with me in the comments on Substack. I genuinely want to hear them. Sometimes another person’s perspective gives us access to a doorway inside ourselves that we hadn’t found yet. Thanks for being here! This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit shannonamrein.substack.com

Blood, Belly & Stars explores healing through the restoration of relationship. Join Shannon Amrein for conversations on embodiment, shamanism, womb wisdom, intuition, soul medicine, and Earth-based healing, along with weekly intuitive readings to guide you through the energies and themes of the week ahead. shannonamrein.substack.com

Creator

Shannon Amrein
Years Active

2026
Episodes

74
Rating

Explicit
Copyright

© Shannon Amrein LLC
Show Website

Blood, Belly & Stars